General News

2007 Summit Success

The recent Joomla! Summit, held last month at Google, provided the opportunity for core team members to consider a number of project position appointments. The team supported a vote for the appointment of Johan Janssens, Louis Landry and Shayne Bartlett as project managers. The new appointments of project managers provides a remit to work in facilitation roles with working group coordinators. This move takes the functional roles which the project has been working with from interim phase to a more formal structure.

We also take this opportunity to recognise three champions of open source. Core team members David Gall, Emir Sakic and Rey Gigataras are stepping down from core team positions. David, who worked in translations and on several Open Source Matters issues, is moving forward with personal goals. Emir, whose history with the project goes back to the Mambo days — as does Rey — has a range of projects on the boil. And finally, Rey, the stalwart 'Mr Fixit' of Mambo and Joomla! off to pastures new.

More information

The Summit provided the opportunity for the Core Team and Open Source Matters Board of Directors to scope out a range of significant functional issues. The process involved discussion and debate of key issues with guidance facilitated by hand-picked experts. The licensing discussion was of primary importance, given the forthcoming release of Joomla! 1.5. More information will be released as progress is made. We're making some good progress with the help of James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center — but we are not there yet. As soon as we have something concrete, we will start the external communication of this progress. Moreover, working to improve our communication channels was discussed and we've decided to endeavor to put out monthly reports as blog posts from working groups.

Thank you very much

The combined Summit and Joomla!Day USA (West) provided an amazing focus for core members and community interaction. There's no substitute for face-to-face meetings and collaboration. An event of this scale could not have happened without the most generous support of Google — a special thanks to Leslie Hawthorn for creating the opportunity, great food and opening up the Googleplex to open source geeks. We'd also like to thank Allen Gunn from Aspirationtech for facilitating the Summit. Last but not least, we'd like to thank the community ... everyone from the mom and pop hobbyists to professional website developers. We are an interesting bunch indeed. As a key part of the open source recipe, community thinking is always paramount to our considerations.